Sensorless Control Technology of brushless DC motor for Airconditioner in FCV

Bo Hu, Guoqing Xu, Hao Hu, Mingrui Zhang Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Tongji University 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai, 200092, China
Abstract- The paper proposed a new sensorless operation for Brushless DC Motor. In this paper, analysis of the new position detection method is completed, and also a special startup method is proposed and as well as a special control mode switch scheme. Through this method, the brushless DC motor can start from standstill smoothly, the experiment based on the motor for the Air-conditioner used in fuel-cell vehicle is carried out, which proves the proposed method.

I.

INTRODUCTION

BLDC motors not only have the advantages of simple structures, stable working and easily guarding such as the AC motors, and also have the advantages of DC motors such as the high operating efficiency, no loss of magnetic stimulus and good performance of speed control[1][2][3]. So it is widely used in the field of chemical Industry, textile Industry, medical devices and household electric appliances. The position sensor of the rotor plays a very important role in the BLDC, which provides the correct phase-convert information. However, the sensor adds not only the costs to the motors and also the difficulties to the motors structure. Besides, in some highprecision needed place or under some complicated environment, the senor information will be influenced, which will lower the performance of the system. Thus the sensorless control is necessary and it is also the hot spot of the research filed towards BLDC motors. The Sensorless BLDC motors overcome the disadvantages of the BLDC, and also expands its application field. As a new vehicle which can adopt various kinds of energy and produces no pollution, Electric Automobiles is more and more emphasized by the society especially the government. And due to the high efficiency and rate of torque-to-weight, BLDC motors is popular in the system of the Electric Automobiles. The paper performed the sensorless control of the air-conditioner(AC in the text) in FCV(Fuel-cell Vehicle) by using the Back EMF, and proposed the optimal converting operation stage from separately-controlled synchronous mode to self-controlled brushless one. In AC, the motor which drives the compressor has to endure a high temperature and strong mechanical vibrancy; and at the consideration of the install in the FCV, the size is strictly restrict; So that, the sensorless BLDC motor solution is the best choice. Recently, sensorless operation of a BLDCM using the backelectromotive-force (EMF) information, such as back-EMF zero crossing, has widely been used and is adequate for small or low-cost application such as the hard disk drive (HDD). But,

when the motor is at a standstill or at low speed, it is impossible or very difficult to get the position information from the back EMF. Therefore, a special starting method is generally needed. One starting solution is the open-loop startup method by injecting current which is ramped up from low to high frequency[2]. However, with the unknown initial rotor position as well as the static friction, the motor may fail to start or even rotate in a revering direction. Another solution is starting the motor from a predetermined position by injecting the motor with a preset two phases of the three-phase windings to ensure the rotor align with the preset induced magnetic field. Then with the initial rotor position and known commutation logic, an open loop control scheme is applied to speed up the motor from standstill until the rotor reaches the speed which the back-EMF can be detected properly[4][5]. However, the switch instant and the condition are seldom researched. In our system, taking account of the cost and reliable, the start method uses the latter scheme, and the motor will speed up to a certain speed. Then with a special switch judge process, the motor can be smoothly switch to EMF controlled mode. II. SENSORLESS CONTROL IN BLDC MOTORS A. The position locating of the rotor and startup of the sensorless BLDC Motor The inductive EMF of the BLDC motor is very low or zero when the motor operates in a low speed or standstill. So it is very difficult to judge the position of the rotor poles, and thus the other methods should be introduced in to locate the position and start. Recent years, the research results towards problem are mainly about the following: 3-step starting, pre-located starting, pulse-detect starting and starting by the periphery circuit[1][6][7]. As the motors for the FCV, the paper utilizes the 3-step start. 3-step start includes the 3 steps of rotor locating, separatelycontrolled synchronous mode and self-controlled mode. During the start, the statuses of the power devices are changed according to the rotating needs. At the same time, the zerocross point of the back EMF is obtained by detecting the voltage of the terminal. Besides, the input voltage of the motor is elevated by increasing the duty of the PWM[2][8]. B. The detect of rotor position Estimating the position of the rotors in the sensorless BLDC motors has 5 ways: Back-EMF, Current Detect, Status Watcher, Artificial Intelligence and Magnetic Flux. The 3 former

978-1-4244-4252-2/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE

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methods are riper and have applied in a certain degree, while the AI method and the Flux-function method are just on their starting[8][9][10]. The paper gets the rotor position through the back-EMF, which is getting the zero-crossing timing and therefore making suitable delay. And simultaneously, the converting orders of the motor are got which ensures the motor run in the self-controlled mode. In the paper, the zero-cross of the back-EMF is obtained by detecting the terminal voltage of the windings though the specific circuits. And in the paper, there are only two phase turned on at one time in the system. And based on the principle of the motors, the equation of the 3-phase back-EMF zerocross detecting is[3]:

Ea U a 1 1 1 U a E = U 1 1 1 1 U b b 3 b Ec U c 1 1 1 U c
III. THE HARDWARE DESIGN OF THE BLDC MOTOR CONTROL SYSTEM

(1) `

Figure1. Control system diagram of BLDC for AC in FCV

The drive and control system of the sensorless BLDC includes BLDC motor, power module, drive circuit, control module, terminal voltage detecting circuit, and rotor position detecting circuit. The Fig.1 shows the block diagram of the whole system. In the system, the control module contains the DSP processor- TMS320LF2407 produced by TI Corporation, the watch dog circuit, input and output tuning circuit, CAN communication module and so on; while the drive circuit includes the current and voltage detecting circuit and trouble protecting circuit; and the power module utilizes the 7-unit IPM module of Mitsubishi corporation. A. Terminal voltage detecting circuit In Fig.1, the area of dotted line is the terminal voltage detecting circuit. This signal contains not only the back-EMF and also the chopping noise. The chopping noise will disturb the waveform of the back-EMF signal seriously, and thus make the zero-cross not clear. So, it is necessary to add a Low-pass filter in the circuit. However, the introduction of the filter will produce the phase shift to the zero-cross. And therefore, in the application, it is necessary to make some phase compensation to the converting timing. B. The detect circuit of the rotor position According to the (1), the detecting circuit is constructed as shown in Fig.2. In this circuit, the zero-cross of the back-EMF is detected by 3 Comparers. While, R1R3R5R2R4 R6R7=R8=R9and R7>>R2>R1R7R8R9 is used to isolate the mutual disturbance. The terminal voltage of the 3 phase Uao, Ubo, Uco is compared with the neutral voltage Un. And then input the result-Sa, Sb, Sc to the interruption capture pin of DSP, and as a result, the DSP can capture 6 signals of the back-EMF in a period.

Figure2. rotor position detecting circuit

IV.

ANALYSIS OF THE CRITICAL TECHNOLOGY

A. Initial rotor position detection One of the critical technology of the sensorless BLDC motors is Initial rotor position detection. As shown in Fig.3, the voltage vectors and the generated fluxes divide the whole plane into 6 zones. If the rotor is at the position in Fig.4 (a), the flux generated by V5(IGBT-VT4&VT5 are on) is mostly close to the rotor. According to the saturation effect, the inductance will reduce, and the stator winding will have the rapidest current response. So, the method to estimate the initial rotor position is proposed.

Figure3. Voltage vectors and the generated flux

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Figure4. Process of the initial rotor position estimation

Apply V1-V6 vectors(V1 vector can be obtained when IGBT-VT1&VT6 are on, and V6 vector obtained by VT5&VT6, ) pulse with a same width in the order. Sample the voltage on the sample resistor which is corresponding to the DC-link current I1-I6. Compare the obtained value I1-I6, and find the maximum value Imax and the corresponding voltage vector Vmax. And the initial position can be determined in a 60 degree zone around the Vmax. Compare the current generated by vectors succeeding (Va) and proceding (Vb) the vector Vmax which obtain the largest sample value, in which, a=max%6+1, b=1+(max+4)%6. If Ia >Ib, which means that the rotor position is closer to the flux generated by Va than flux by Vb, and so the initial rotor position is between the area of the Vmax and the succeeding 30 degree, vice versa. In the case of Fig.4 (a), by sampling the current in the DClink after each voltage vector pulse (V1-V6) being applied, the current I1-I6 can be obtained. Compare each current value I1I5, the current I5 will reach the max value, which the Vmax is found. Then the rotor position can be determined in the zone 1 as shown in Fig.4 (b). Further, compare the current I6(behind I5, and generated by Va) and I4 (before I5, and generated by Va), and here the rotor is more close to Va, so I6 will be larger than I4.Then the initial rotor position can be determined more precise into 30 electric degree areas. B. Start Method Another critical technology of the sensorless BLDC motors is the Start. With the known position above, the maximum start voltage vector can be obtained. The program block diagram during separately-controlled start period is shown in Fig.5. According to the chapter above, the motor in FCV adopts the 3-step start method. When the speed of the rotor is zero, the VT5 and VT6 are turned on to make the rotor pre-located and the input voltage U is equal to Uo. Then the IGBT-VT1VT6, VT1VT2, VT3VT2, VT3VT4, VT5VT4, VT5VT6 are turned on by sequence. When the speed of the rotor increases (the fN increase), the input voltage UkfNU0, k is a constant number, and each turn-on interval is TN1/fN. In the figure, fs is the lowest frequency when converting to the selfcontrolled mode.

Converting technology from separately-controlled synchronous mode to self-controlled The next critical point of the Sensorless BLDC control system is converting operation mode. The traditional way is that, when the speed arrives at a certain value, the back-EMF is enough to be detected to get the information of the rotor position, and then the separately-controlled signal is cut by the MCU and the rotor runs into the self-controlled way. However, when the phase errors between the converting signal and the separately-controlled signal generated by the MCU are too large, the motor will step out and then stop. The paper gives a unique way which can find the best converting point in order to prevent the out-step which is caused by the too large phase error between separately-controlled signal and self-controlled signal and ensure torque to be enough to the load disturbance on the converting moment. When BLDC works in the self-controlled mode, 30s delay of the back-EMFs down edge is the timing of turning VT6 off and VT2 on. And so, the phase error between the Sc and the down edge of the VT6s drive signal is calculated in

C.

Figure5. Flow diagram of in separately-controlled synchronous mode

Figure6. The optimal switching process from open-loop control to self-control mode

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V.

EXPERIMENT RESULT AND WAVEFORM

Figure7. 90-as phase delay switching

According to the diagram, an experiment is made which is using 375V DC as source and a 3KW 4 polar pole BLDC Motor for FCV. The Fig.8-10 is the waveform of the experiment. While in Fig.8, the wave 1 is the terminal voltage of phase A, compared with Ua in Fig.1, there is high-frequency chopping noise; wave 2 is the waveform after the filter. Compared with Uao in Fig.2, the component of high frequency is filtered; however the phase shift is introduced. The wave 3 is the wave of the neutral. Compared with the Un in Fig.2, the frequency is 3 time of the terminal voltage. Wave 4 is the zerocrossing signal of phase As the back-EMF, corresponding to

the separately-controlled period. As shown in Fig.4, when ( 30)/TN decreasing to a preset value , the motor changes its running mode from separately-controlled mode to selfcontrolled mode. And the phase delay introduced by filter can be neglected because the motor is running in the low speed. Besides, in order to ensure the stable converting, there are two additional conditions. One is that, at the converting moment, the motor speed must faster than a set value, that is fN>fS. The other is that, before converting, the Sc-Sb-Sa sequence must be continuously changed as 100101001011010110 100, just as shown in Fig.6. D. Switching Technology As referred in chapter , the filter will produce phase shift. According to Fig.1, it is easy to get the phase shift generated by the detected circuit. Taking phase A as example, Ua is terminal voltage, Uao is the output voltage after the filter, f is the frequency of the back-EMF, and is the phase delay. Based on the basic wave, that is

U ao R2 = U a R1 + R2 + j 2 fR1 R2C1

(2)

Figure8. The waveform of the BLDC when its speed at 3000rpm for AC (Orange lineThe waveform of the terminal voltage in A phase; blueThe waveform of the terminal voltage in A phase after the filter; purpleThe waveform of the neutral voltage; greenThe waveform of the compared zerocrossing of the back-EMF in A phase.)

= arctg

2 fR1 R2C1 R1 + R2

(3)

Where the R1 and R2 are the same scalar, C1 takes a large value, the phase shift is relative to the device and the frequency of the input signal. So it has to make dynamic compensation when tuning the speed. When the tuning speed range is too large, the phase delay is over 30, and the 30 s switching delay cant satisfy the system. So this paper adopted a 90 s switching delay. As shown in Fig.7, the switching point of zero-crossing m1 is n1, which means that the zero-crossing m1 of the Ec(Sc) turns VT3 on. Although a is rated to the motor speed, its value can be calculated online. However, to shorten the computing time, along with the error between the calculated value and the real value, this paper has made lots of experiments, and got a table of under different speed, through which a is obtained when the system is running.

Figure9. The zero-crossing signal of each phase in 3000rpm orangeThe zero-crossing signal of back-EMF in A phasegreenThe zero-crossing signal of back-EMF in B phasepurpleThe zero-crossing signal of back-EMF in C phase

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the Sa in Fig.2. Fig.9 shows the zero-crossing signal Sa Sb Sc of every phases back-EMF at 3000rpm, which are 120 phase delay each other. The wave of Fig.10 is same as that of Fig.9 while the motor speed is 4000rpm. During the experiment, the motor begins from the start period, then speeds up in separately-controlled mode, at last works in self-controlled way. It converts smoothly and can work very well, which proves that the method proposed in this paper towards controlling of sensorless BLDC motor is practicable. It should be noticed that the resistor and the filtering capacitor should be chosen to be high reliable. Otherwise, the generated wave will be distorted with the high temperature. As shown in Fig.11, if the capacitor C1, C2 and C3 in detecting circuit are the normal ones, there is distortion in the Sa, Sb and Sc in 85 C. CONCLUSION This paper proposed a sensorless BLDC motor drive solution for the AC in FCV. By the pre-alignment and implementing a certain series commuting pulse, the motor speeds up. And then, by detecting the back-EMF and judging preset commuting condition, the motor will switch to a back-EMF controlled mode smoothly. REFERENCES
[1] S. Ogasawara and H. Akagi, An approach to position sensorless drive for brushless DC motors, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 27, pp. 928933,Sept.-Oct. 1991. [2] W. J. Lee and S. K. Sul, A new starting method of BLDC motors without position sensor. IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 42, pp. 1532-1538, Nov.-Dec. 2006. [3] Y.C. Chang and Y.Y. Tzou, A New Sensorless Starting Method for Brushless DC Motors without Reversing Rotation, IEEE Trans. . 2007. [4] N. Matsui, Sensorless PM brushless dc motor drives, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 300308, Apr. 1996. [5] G. H. Jang, J. H. Park, and J. H. Chang, Position detection and startup algorithm of a rotor in a sensorless BLDC motor utilizing inductance variation, Proc. Inst. Electr. Eng.Electr. Power Appl., vol. 149, no. 2, pp. 137142, Mar. 2002. [6] S. Nakashima, Y. Inagaki, and I. Miki, Sensorless initial rotor position estimation of surface permanent-magnet synchronous motor, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 36, pp. 1598-1603, Nov.-Dec. 2000. [7] K. Tanaka, T. Yuzawa, R Moriyama, and I. Miki, Initial rotor position estimation for surface permanent magnet synchronous motor, IEEE IAC, vol.4, pp. 2592-2597, Sept.-Oct. 2001. [8] Yen-Shin Lai, Fu-San Shyu, and Shian-Shau Tseng, New initial position detection technique for three-phase brushless DC motor without position and current sensors, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 39, pp. 485-491, Mar.Apr. 2003. [9] J. Sugawara, T. Kaimori, and S. Nishikata, A novel and simple initial rotor position detecting method for PMSMs, IEEE PEDS, pp. 612-617, 2005. [10] M. Schroedl, An improved position estimation for sensorless controller permanent magnet synchronous motor, in Proc. EPE Conf., 1991, pp. 418423.

Figure10. The zero-crossing signal of each phase in 4000rpm orangeThe zero-crossing signal of back-EMF in A phasegreenThe zero-crossing signal of back-EMF in B phasepurpleThe zero-crossing signal of back-EMF in C phase

Figure11. Comparing of the effect of adopting normal capacitor and high reliable capacitor at 85C (Green-The detecting waveform on normal capacitor, Orange-waveform using the high reliable capacitor)

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